Information about large IT suppliers

Tag Archives: SAP

We made jokes last week when IBM didn’t buy a company, I guess we can’t make the same joke twice. With their purchase of Truven, IBM has has solidified its place in the medical analysis world. The market is reacting well to the news, with IBM up 5% on the day of the announcement.

While IBM (finally) gets some good financial news, Dell is still in a waiting pattern for funding. News that the EU is set to approve the deal is looming as Michael Dell finalizes the loans from mostly Chinese financial institutions. Loans are not the only source of funds as Dell is looking to sell off assets, namely Perot Systems.

IBM

IBM buying healthcare analytics firm Truven for $2.6B

Truven has over 8,500 clients, and will boost the size of Watson Health to over 5,000 employees. IBM: “Upon completion of the acquisition, IBM’s health cloud will house one of the world’s largest and most diverse collections of health-related data, representing an aggregate of approximately 300 million patient lives acquired from three companies. IBM plans to integrate Truven’s extensive cloud-based data set spanning hundreds of different types of cost, claims, quality and outcomes information with its existing data sets.”

As a reminder of the health-related companies IBM has purchased in the last year:

The deal comes six months after one to buy top medical imaging software firm Merge Healthcare, and ten months after the purchases of patient data analysis software firm Phytel and clinical database provider Explorys. The Phytel/Explorys deals coincided with the launch of Watson Health, which aims to provide software/services that can deliver insights from large volumes of anonymized patient data.

And by grand challenges, it’s thinking big — it lists past achievements like the moon landing, mapping the human genome, and addressing climate change. (That last one might still be up for grabs, by the way).

The contest is being launched Wednesday at the TED conference in Vancouver by Peter Diamandis, founder of XPrize, which is partnering with IBM on the project.

The winners will be announced at TED 2020 (assuming the event is still around then). Three winning teams will split $4.5 million of the prize money, an IBM spokeswoman said, meaning they could each pick up $1.5 million. The other $500,000 will help fund projects along the way. IBM is the one putting up all the cash.

Blockchain is a type of distributed database. It’s designed in a way that ensures that all transactions are public, yet no centralized party has exclusive control over them. The technology has become explosively popular because it powers Bitcoin, the open source, peer-to-peer payment system — although it can be used for much more than that.

IBM’s visions of blockchain are centered around IoT:

IBM is also promoting integration of blockchain apps with IoT devices for purposes that extend beyond payment. “Devices will be able to communicate to blockchain-based ledgers to update or validate smart contracts,” IBM says. “For example, as an IoT-connected package moves along multiple distribution points, the package location and temperature information could be updated on a blockchain. This allows all parties to share information and status of the package as it moves among multiple parties to ensure the terms of a contract are met.”

The z13s includes new cryptography hardware that can encrypt and decrypt data twice as fast as its predecessors for example. To speed up the z13s’ cryptography functions, the mainframe now features a faster cryptography co-processor card with more memory than IBM’s previous mid-range machines.

“This means clients can process twice as many high-volume, cryptographically-protected transactions as before without compromising performance,” the company says. “This equates to processing twice as many online or mobile device purchases

“You see two of them coming together on yesterday’s business model, and you see another one breaking up on yesterday’s business model,” Rometty said in a thinly veiled reference to the pending merger of Dell and EMC, and last year’s split of Hewlett-Packard into two companies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HP Inc.

Following its earlier announcement of a partnership with Red Hat, Microsoft added Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions 6.7 and 7.2 to the Azure Marketplace. That means developers who want to use the popular operating system now have an easy and Microsoft-approved path to get it running on Azure.

A majority of Azure Marketplace workloads are Linux-based, which is an interesting position for Microsoft’s cloud platform, considering the company’s previously dim view of the open source OS.

“Between the date the merger agreement was entered into and the date of this proxy statement/prospectus, the market value of the VMware Class A common stock has declined, thereby reducing the implied value of the stock portion of the merger consideration,” the letter said.

“Changes in the market value of the VMware Class A common stock also will impact the amount of cash that holders of EMC common stock will receive in the merger in lieu of fractional shares of Class V Common Stock,” the letter continued.

Dell Inc, the world’s third-biggest maker of computers, is set to gain unconditional EU antitrust approval for its US$67 billion bid for data storage company EMC Corp, two people familiar with the matter said on Thursday. European Commission spokesman Ricardo Cardoso declined to comment on Thursday. The Commission is scheduled to give its ruling on the deal by Feb. 29.

Round Rock-based Dell is trying to sell the IT consulting business to raise money to fund its $67 billion buyout of Massachusetts-based EMC Corp. Dell has asked for $5 billion for Perot Systems but worldwide market jitters appear to have dampened companies’ appetite for tech acquisitions.

It will be the largest campus outside the US and will seat 11,000 employees, which will be ready in the next five years, BusinessLine reports.

The company will also launch incubation centres. “I am particularly excited about the incubation centres which will house substantial software and technology capabilities, tools, and training to help launch new technology start-ups built utilising Java and the Oracle platform,” Catz added.

Too often I have witnessed companies prematurely forced into a negotiation as a result of an event created by SAP (e.g. audit) or their company (e.g. merger). These organizations are compelled to operate in a reactionary manner, and challenged to fully understand their existing relationship with SAP, resulting in uncertainty and doubt. In most cases, these situations result in below market commercial agreements, increased risk and strained relationships, both internally and with SAP.

On the other hand, I have also partnered with IT executives who recognize the need to anticipate such events and proactively undertake a detailed baseline and assessment of their SAP relationship well in advance of entertaining a commercial discussion.

Virtualization made computing more efficient by enabling companies to run multiple operating systems on a single server. But VMs only support one application per OS. Containers take server resource utilization much further by allowing developers to run an app in its own container, and run multiple containers on the same OS. Developers can also move containers between Linux servers or virtual machines (VMs) and make changes to apps or portions of apps, called microservices, without breaking the software and risking downtime. Proponents say containers facilitates greater agility in the age of constantly updated mobile and Web apps.

Considering summer is unofficially over, it was a slow news week from suppliers. IBM did make an interesting move by picking up software developer StrongLoop. This continues their strategy on cloud and mobile. IBM also announced the opening of Watson Health Center in Boston.

Oracle is quietly cutting their Java experts while HP overtakes Cisco in providing cloud infrastructure. Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst details how his company makes money on services when the software is free.

IBM opened its new IBM Watson Health global headquarters in Cambridge, Mass., and announced that Deborah DiSanzo is joining the company as the business unit’s general manager. The IBM Watson Health Cloud for Life Sciences Compliance will help biomedical companies bring medical innovations to market more efficiently. This solution will help the companies fast-track the deployment of a GxP-compliant infrastructure and applications while adhering to stringent requirements for hosting, accessing and sharing regulated data.

One company that hasn’t shown an ability to innovate in the way that it competes in the market – especially in cloud – compared to someone like Microsoft, who is a chief competitor, is IBM. Like Apple, IBM has also been a slave to a dividend and buyback program. Like Apple, IBM has spent over $100 billion on its buyback program. And, like Apple, IBM’s stock price has lagged the overall market in the last three years.

StrongLoop is as startup based in San Mateo, California. The company focuses on the creation and development of software for enterprises by using the open-source JavaScript programming language Node.js. Software built by StrongLoop allow companies to create cloud and mobile based apps which are equipped with APIs that allows them to handle massive amounts of data through mobile, web and Internet of Things apps.

Box shows how a single deal with IBM can move the needle for any $2 billion company

The partnership, announced in June, allows both companies to plug-in to each other’s technologies, while working on joint apps and sales strategies. Box benefits by gaining access to IBM’s wide array of technologies and client network. IBM gets to tap into Box’s advanced cloud storage offerings.

“Activist investors are pretty simple folk. Their objective is as quickly as possible drive change that increases shareholder value.” The EMC Federation, Gelsinger feels, has “laid out a strategy for this period of tumult.” “Being bigger and more strategic is the right strategy,” he adds. “That is the perspective we have taken through the changes. And we think that in the longer term we will be rewarded for that.”

Although hybrid cloud remains a huge part of VMware’s strategy, the VMware partners said they’re expecting EMC to combine vCloud Air with its Virtustream cloud business in a new company under the EMC Federation. EMC closed its $1.2 billion acquisition of Virtustream in July.

Whitman, 59, was appointed to run the computer giant in Sep 2011. She will lead the new H-P Enterprise business group post the spilt in Nov 1 this year. Whitman stated that this is the right time for her to join the board of SurveyMonkey. She looks at the offer as an attractive one as it’s her first external board appointment since she joined H-P in 2011.

After nipping at Cisco’s heels for two years, HP finally overtook arch rival Cisco in the cloud infrastructure equipment battle in Q2, albeit by the slimmest of margins. Synergy Research Group says after tying in Q1 with 13%, HP finally wrestled top spot from Cisco which declined by half a percentage point, while HP remained consistent on 13%.

Cameron Purdy, a senior vice president for development and a noted Java evangelist, left Oracle in August after more than 8 years at the company, according to his LinkedIn bio. In a few tweets, he indicated that this was Oracle’s decision.

“I see no need in the foreseeable future for big acquisitions,” Chief Financial Officer Luka Mucic said at a meeting with reporters Thursday at the company’s headquarters in Walldorf, Germany. “If you talk about big acquisitions, what is left in the market?”Salesforce.com Inc. is too expensive and Workday Inc. would overlap with SAP’s product line, Mucic said.

Adams: I have to ask: How do you make money on free software? Whitehurst: It’s very hard. The source code to all our software is indeed free. We offer services and support. You can download random Linux or open source software. But if you’re running nuclear submarines, major stock exchanges, or big banks, you want to make sure they’re secure and that you have support. We’re a business-to-business company.

IBM actually sells off a portion of their supply chain software (not Emptoris) to LlamaSoft:

Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Llamasoft said it will buy IBM’s LogicNet Plus, the Inventory and Product Flow Analyst, and IBM’s Transportation Analyst products. Llamasoft has been growing fast in recent years due to increased interest in the company’s specialties of supply chain modeling, analytics and optimization. Under the transaction, Llamasoft will absorb the IBM supply chain technology and support team.

Corporate procurement services is a lucrative market that’s already served by software bigwigs like Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) and Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM). Research firm Frost & Sullivan estimates that the B2B online retail market will grow to $6.7 trillion by 2020 due to rapid adoption of online purchasing platforms. [2] Corporate procurement service providers stand to make billions of dollars in fees by providing cloud-based platforms and management services to facilitate such online purchases by big companies.

By developing a product innovation platform, the connected products portfolio is capable of managing and integrating customer-driven engineering innovations by coordinating every ‘business function’ and ‘bill of material requirements.’ This portfolio will not only deliver considerable improvement over existing solutions but also develop new functionality, which will make manufacturing companies more responsive to customer demand.

To truly understand your compliance risk from all third parties, including those in the Supply Chain, you have to get out of the ivory tower and on the road. This is even truer when exploring innovation. You do not have hit the road with the “primary goal to be the inception point for innovation” but through such interactions, innovation can come about “organically”. There is little downside for a compliance practitioner to go and visit a Supply Chain partner and have a “face-to-face meeting simply to get to know the partner better and more precisely identify that partner’s needs.”

The Western procurement issue in China (Yes, the US did have some kind of back-door spying equipment installed in American-branded equipment but China isn’t an innocent party – they have been ripping off US patents and designs for years to get their manufacturers competitive. )

Yes, the US did have some kind of back-door spying equipment installed in American-branded equipment but China isn’t an innocent party – they have been ripping off US patents and designs for years to get their manufacturers competitive.

Procurement can and will play an increasingly strategic role in managing this virtual enterprise, leveraging technology to simplify the way complex business gets done and manage their operations in a new and dynamic way that keeps their companies ahead of the competition. Procurement is evolving from service to a function. And with increasing frequency, it is focused on business value and enabling supplier innovations as opposed to just driving procurement savings through cost reductions.

A company with a high proportion of long-term contract agreements in its order book is likely to be more secure than a firm completing work on a shorter term basis. However, a retained contract should not prompt reckless overconfidence; it is often a good idea to look over notice periods and analyse the probability of changes in market conditions or demand which could reduce a client’s requirement for the business’ goods or services.

Failure to Work With Minority Owned Businesses a Challenge in the Private and Public Sector

Last month, the NAACP Florida State Conference led by President Adora Obi Nweze released an Economic Development Report Card on the records of targeted cities, counties, school districts and private corporations in the State of Florida. What stood out amidst all of the findings were the poor minority procurement practices that were consistent through the public and private sector. In summary, most local governments spent less than two percent with veteran, minority and women -owned businesses.

Bill McDermott argues that the best business leaders put their family first and should demonstrate this as a best-practice for their employees. McDermott is the CEO of SAP, a multinational corporation that makes enterprise software to manage customer relations and business operations. He is the author of Winners Dream: A Journey from Corner Store to Corner Office.